(1,862 words)

Women played a central role in
Eritrea's
30-year war for independence from
Ethiopia,
which annexed the former Italian colony in the 1960s, but their
post-independence participation in public life presents a mixed record.
By the nationalist victory in 1991, they made up nearly a third of the
95,000 – strong
Eritrean
People's Liberation Front (EPLF) and 13
percent of the frontline fighters in what had been the longest-running
conflict in modern African history – a conflict characterized
by remarka…